What are you reading ?

[Wild_Bill]

What's the book on your bedside table at the moment ?

I have two.
Book One: A Journey by Tony Blair (ex UK Prime Minister memoirs) Very interesting but harps on too much about his love for America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journey
I would rate it 6 out of 10 for a political book.

Book Two: Jack of Ravens by Mark Chadbourne. (Great fantasy book, incorporating the modern age with magic and supernatural)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Serpent
Started reading his books over ten years ago, i think he was one of the first to bring Fantasy into the modern age with his first book Worlds end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_End_(Chadbourn)
I would rate it 8 out of 10, but only if you have read the previous books, as you need to know and understand the characters.

 

[uncleg]

The News Paper.

 

[jetsam]

Just some light reading for me...

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory [Kindle Edition]
Brian Greene (Author)

One of the more compelling scientific (cum-theological) questions in the Middle Ages was: "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Today's version in cutting-edge science is, "How many strings... ?" As posited by s tring theory physics, strings are furiously vibrating loops of stuff. The concept of strings was devised to help scientists describe simultaneously both energy and matter. The frequency and resonance of strings' vibration, just like those of strings on an instrument, determine charge, spin and other familiar properties of energy?and eventually the structure of the universe: a true music of the spheres. There's a chance that strings are themselves made up of something still smaller. But scientists can prove their existence only on the blackboard and computer, because they are much too tiny?a hundred billion billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom?to be observed experimentally. Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Cornell and Columbia universities, makes the terribly complex theory of strings accessible to all. He possesses a remarkable gift for using the everyday to illustrate what may be going on in dimensions beyond our feeble human perception. Just when we might be tempted to dismiss strings as grist for the publish-or-perish mill, Greene explains how they have demonstrated connections between mathematics and physics that have helped solve age-old conundrums in each field. This book will appeal to astronomy as well as math and physics fans because it probes the important insights string theory gives into hotly debated issues in cosmology. Later chapters require careful attention to Greene's explications, but the effort will prepare readers to follow the scientific advances likely to be made in the next millennium through application of string theory.

I think this was adapted to a tv series, The Big Bang Theory.

 

[edmontonsubbie]

Archie Gets Married. I`m almost to the part where I find out if it`s Veronica or Betty.

 

[Miss*Bijou]

Just some light reading for me...

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory [Kindle Edition]
Brian Greene (Author)

FYI - Thought I'd share another link I've found useful!

I found this website that searches for books all over the web from title or keywords and I've managed to find LOADS of book to read so try it out if you want.. (No, I don't think it's stealing as it's the exact same as borrowing a book from the library IMO. The only difference is that I can keep it longer and don't have to bring it back without having had a chance to read it! )

For example:
The Elegant universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory - Download here

~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~​

If anyone finds it intriguing but doesn't want to or can't read it for whatever reason... you can watch the Nova series from PBS with the same title (the elegant universe) with the author as presenter/host.


It's awesome! I think I would have a tougher time reading about this topic and watching in video format is probably a lot easier for me to understand. If anyone's interested, you can watch it here:

Part 1:


[video=google;-950107929905025323]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-950107929905025323#[/video]





Part 2:

[video=google;-8243311581085429815]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8243311581085429815#[/video]




Part 3:​

[video=google;8188906232786886947]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8188906232786886947#[/video]





~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~​

.
​

 

[Miss*Bijou]

.​

As for what I'm reading..

I think I might be a little ADHD perhaps? lol but I have 3 books going right now (not to mention 2 audiobooks too lol). My problem is that I have too many books I'm wanting to start and I just can't wait for the first to be finished before starting another. It's ok. Depending on my mood, there's at least one I'm likely to want to read. lol


They're all pretty mellow, easy reads and I'm enjoying all of these:


- Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us
by Alexandra Morton (Amazon page+preview)


For the past twenty-five years, Alexandra Morton has been at the forefront of whale and dolphin research, dedicating her life to the study of orcas (also known as killer whales). Now in "Listening to Whales, Morton shares the spellbinding story of her career, her adventures in the wilderness, the heartbreak she has endured, and the rewards of living her life on her own terms.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Alexandra Morton began her career in marine mammal research in 1976, when she moved to California to work for noted dolphin researcher, Dr. John C. Lilly. Since 1984 she has lived on the isolated central British Columbia coast, where she studies and records the language and habits of the various pods of orcas that swim the waters there.





- Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism
by Melanie Joy PhD (Google Books preview --- Amazon page+preview)


In her groundbreaking new book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social mechanisms. Like other "isms" (racism, ageism, etc.), carnism is most harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldnt eat meat, Joys book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more informed choices as citizens and consumers.


From publisher weekly:
Despite a penchant for melodrama, Joy (Strategic Action for Animals) offers an absorbing examination of why humans feel affection and compassion for certain animals but are callous to the suffering of others—especially those slaughtered for our consumption. She takes Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, and Jonathan Safran Foer's well-trod route and investigates factory farming, exposing how cruelly the animals are treated, the hazards that meatpacking workers face, and the environmental impact of raising 10 billion animals for food each year. She uses her factory farm–to–table narrative to buttress her real thesis: meat-eating or carnism, is an oppressive ideology as noxious as racism. Joy casts meat eating as genocide, comparable to the Holocaust, and factory farming on a par with the American enslavement of Africans. She might lose some readers in her zealotry, but there is great value in her contention that all systems of oppression depend on our ability to dissociate or find elaborate rationalizations to keep from recognizing the suffering of a socially sanctioned inferior.





- The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption
by Jim Gorant (Amazon page)


An inspiring story of survival and our powerful bond with man's best friend, in the aftermath of the nation's most notorious case of animal cruelty. Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick's brutal dog fighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed writer Jim Gorant discovered, their story is the truly newsworthy aspect of this case. Expanding on Gorant's Sports Illustrated cover story, The Lost Dogs traces the effort to bring Vick to justice and turns the spotlight on these infamous pit bulls, which were saved from euthanasia by an outpouring of public appeals coupled with a court order that Vick pay nearly a million dollars in "restitution" to the dogs. As an ASPCA-led team evaluated each one, they found a few hardened fighters, but many more lovable, friendly creatures desperate for compassion. In The Lost Dogs, we meet these amazing animals, a number of which are now living in loving homes, while some even work in therapy programs: Johnny Justice participates in Paws for Tales, which lets kids get comfortable with reading aloud by reading to dogs; Leo spends three hours a week with cancer patients and troubled teens. At the heart of the stories are the rescue workers who transformed the pups from victims of animal cruelty into healing caregivers themselves, unleashing priceless hope.

~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~​

And one of the audiobooks I'm listening to is a book I recommend to everyone. Whether you read it now or 2 months from now, if you eat meat, consume dairy products and live on this planet where most of the things & products we use are made from animals, you MUST read it! So stop rolling your eyes and do it so you can make smart, responsible and informed choices, whatever this will entail for you.

It's about animal suffering, yes. But that is only a portion of it. Equally as important is our health which is currently jeopardized in many shocking ways by the current disturbing practices that most of us are not aware of. It's not dry and boring at all. Seriously people, please read it!



- Eating Animals
by Jonathan Safran Foer (Amazon page+preview)





Eating Animals is a riveting expose which presents the gut-wrenching truth about the price paid by the environment, the government, the Third World and the animals themselves in order to put meat on our tables more quickly and conveniently than ever before.Interweaving a variety of monologues and balancing humour and suspense with informed rationalism, Eating Animals is as much a novelistic account of an intellectual journey as it is a fresh and open look at the ethical debate around meat-eating. Unlike most other books on the subject, Eating Animals also explores the possibilities for those who do eat meat to do so more responsibly, making this an important book not just for vegetarians, but for anyone who is concerned about the ramifications and significance of their chosen lifestyle.


From Publishers weekly:
Starred Review. The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. On the eve of becoming a father, Foer takes all the arguments for and against vegetarianism a neurotic step beyond and, to decide how to feed his coming baby, investigates everything from the intelligence level of our most popular meat providers-cattle, pigs, and poultry-to the specious self-justifications (his own included) for eating some meat products and not others. Foer offers a lighthearted counterpoint to his investigation in doting portraits of his loving grandmother, and her meat-and-potatoes comfort food, leaving him to wrestle with the comparative weight of food's socio-cultural significance and its economic-moral-political meaning. Without pulling any punches-factory farming is given the full expose treatment-Foer combines an array of facts, astutely-written anecdotes, and his furious, inward-spinning energy to make a personal, highly entertaining take on an increasingly visible (and book-selling) moral question; call it, perhaps, An Omnivore's Dilemma.




Pssst. If you want to read or listen to it, feel free to download one of the versions here:

-->PDF<-- :: :: -->Audio/MP3<-- :: :: -->HTML<--



You're welcome. LOL

.​

 

[ThisEndUp]

"1984" and "How to Lose a War" (Bill Fawcett)

 

[mistressfreyja]

Misspelled 'mispelled' also....but no one noticed.

Archie Gets Married. I`m almost to the part where I find out if it`s Veronica or Betty.

 

[edmontonsubbie]

OMG.....what a classic read. I am still shaking my head at the plot twists and backroads that modern classic took. While I don't want to spoil the ending for any of you considering this volume, I'm going to.

First off, Reggie comes out of the closet and proposes to Jughead. They are married in a civil ceremony down at Riverdale Park in a lovely summer ceremony. Midge dumps Moose and runs off with Dalton. Dalton accepts a professorial position at Stanford Technical and teaches string theory to the hungry minds. Moose keeps the chalkboard erasers clean.

I sure didn't anticipate this next twist. Veronica and Betty dump Archie and set up shop in a little apartment in the lower east end of Riverdale where they support themselves with self filmed lesbian pornography. Archie lands on his feet though. Mrs. Howell finally dumps Thurston and Archie moves to the island where he becomes Mrs. Howell's boy Friday.

As for my misspelling....that was merely artistic licence taken...although thank you taking the time to point it out Mrs. Sperminator Ma'am.

most respectfully,

eddie

 

[melissa.in.abby]

There are some very neat books people are reading. I love threads like this that give me a slew of ideas for potential reads.

Right now, I am almost exclusively reading text books. However, when I have an extra moment, or I am sick of reading to memorize, I have been reading "Red Light Neon: A History of Vancouver's Sex Trade", by Daniel Francis. At the start, it was a little slow (yet still interesting) to get into. But now I am in the last third and I am very glad I made the time to read it.

I will be looking to this thread, over Christmas, for some fresh ideas - thanks!

 

[hunsperger]

.​

As for what I'm reading..

I think I might be a little ADHD perhaps? lol but I have 3 books going right now (not to mention 2 audiobooks too lol). My problem is that I have too many books I'm wanting to start and I just can't wait for the first to be finished before starting another. It's ok. Depending on my mood, there's at least one I'm likely to want to read. lol


They're all pretty mellow, easy reads and I'm enjoying all of these:


- Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us
by Alexandra Morton (Amazon page+preview)


For the past twenty-five years, Alexandra Morton has been at the forefront of whale and dolphin research, dedicating her life to the study of orcas (also known as killer whales). Now in "Listening to Whales, Morton shares the spellbinding story of her career, her adventures in the wilderness, the heartbreak she has endured, and the rewards of living her life on her own terms.

Born and raised in Connecticut, Alexandra Morton began her career in marine mammal research in 1976, when she moved to California to work for noted dolphin researcher, Dr. John C. Lilly. Since 1984 she has lived on the isolated central British Columbia coast, where she studies and records the language and habits of the various pods of orcas that swim the waters there.





- Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism
by Melanie Joy PhD (Google Books preview --- Amazon page+preview)


In her groundbreaking new book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social mechanisms. Like other "isms" (racism, ageism, etc.), carnism is most harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldnt eat meat, Joys book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more informed choices as citizens and consumers.


From publisher weekly:
Despite a penchant for melodrama, Joy (Strategic Action for Animals) offers an absorbing examination of why humans feel affection and compassion for certain animals but are callous to the suffering of others—especially those slaughtered for our consumption. She takes Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, and Jonathan Safran Foer's well-trod route and investigates factory farming, exposing how cruelly the animals are treated, the hazards that meatpacking workers face, and the environmental impact of raising 10 billion animals for food each year. She uses her factory farm–to–table narrative to buttress her real thesis: meat-eating or carnism, is an oppressive ideology as noxious as racism. Joy casts meat eating as genocide, comparable to the Holocaust, and factory farming on a par with the American enslavement of Africans. She might lose some readers in her zealotry, but there is great value in her contention that all systems of oppression depend on our ability to dissociate or find elaborate rationalizations to keep from recognizing the suffering of a socially sanctioned inferior.





- The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption
by Jim Gorant (Amazon page)


An inspiring story of survival and our powerful bond with man's best friend, in the aftermath of the nation's most notorious case of animal cruelty. Animal lovers and sports fans were shocked when the story broke about NFL player Michael Vick's brutal dog fighting operation. But what became of the dozens of dogs who survived? As acclaimed writer Jim Gorant discovered, their story is the truly newsworthy aspect of this case. Expanding on Gorant's Sports Illustrated cover story, The Lost Dogs traces the effort to bring Vick to justice and turns the spotlight on these infamous pit bulls, which were saved from euthanasia by an outpouring of public appeals coupled with a court order that Vick pay nearly a million dollars in "restitution" to the dogs. As an ASPCA-led team evaluated each one, they found a few hardened fighters, but many more lovable, friendly creatures desperate for compassion. In The Lost Dogs, we meet these amazing animals, a number of which are now living in loving homes, while some even work in therapy programs: Johnny Justice participates in Paws for Tales, which lets kids get comfortable with reading aloud by reading to dogs; Leo spends three hours a week with cancer patients and troubled teens. At the heart of the stories are the rescue workers who transformed the pups from victims of animal cruelty into healing caregivers themselves, unleashing priceless hope.

~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~ : ~​

And one of the audiobooks I'm listening to is a book I recommend to everyone. Whether you read it now or 2 months from now, if you eat meat, consume dairy products and live on this planet where most of the things & products we use are made from animals, you MUST read it! So stop rolling your eyes and do it so you can make smart, responsible and informed choices, whatever this will entail for you.

It's about animal suffering, yes. But that is only a portion of it. Equally as important is our health which is currently jeopardized in many shocking ways by the current disturbing practices that most of us are not aware of. It's not dry and boring at all. Seriously people, please read it!



- Eating Animals
by Jonathan Safran Foer (Amazon page+preview)





Eating Animals is a riveting expose which presents the gut-wrenching truth about the price paid by the environment, the government, the Third World and the animals themselves in order to put meat on our tables more quickly and conveniently than ever before.Interweaving a variety of monologues and balancing humour and suspense with informed rationalism, Eating Animals is as much a novelistic account of an intellectual journey as it is a fresh and open look at the ethical debate around meat-eating. Unlike most other books on the subject, Eating Animals also explores the possibilities for those who do eat meat to do so more responsibly, making this an important book not just for vegetarians, but for anyone who is concerned about the ramifications and significance of their chosen lifestyle.


From Publishers weekly:
Starred Review. The latest from novelist Foer is a surprising but characteristically brilliant memoir-investigation, boasting an exhaustively-argued account of one man-child's decade-long struggle with vegetarianism. On the eve of becoming a father, Foer takes all the arguments for and against vegetarianism a neurotic step beyond and, to decide how to feed his coming baby, investigates everything from the intelligence level of our most popular meat providers-cattle, pigs, and poultry-to the specious self-justifications (his own included) for eating some meat products and not others. Foer offers a lighthearted counterpoint to his investigation in doting portraits of his loving grandmother, and her meat-and-potatoes comfort food, leaving him to wrestle with the comparative weight of food's socio-cultural significance and its economic-moral-political meaning. Without pulling any punches-factory farming is given the full expose treatment-Foer combines an array of facts, astutely-written anecdotes, and his furious, inward-spinning energy to make a personal, highly entertaining take on an increasingly visible (and book-selling) moral question; call it, perhaps, An Omnivore's Dilemma.




Pssst. If you want to read or listen to it, feel free to download one of the versions here:

-->PDF<-- :: :: -->Audio/MP3<-- :: :: -->HTML<--



You're welcome. LOL

.​

can you elaborate...

 

[jetsam]

Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley

For me retirement after 35 years at the same job presented many challenges. I read quite a few books but this was the best. It is not really about retirement just how things change and how to deal with them as you age.

http://www.cbass.com/YoungerNext.htm

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books...e|4816770092&gclid=CObN7bWvj6UCFQQ-bAodPCO8Og

 

[Zixia]

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army - Jeremy Scahill
Scahill's liberal horror story is about the company that has deployed many of the private contractors who have assisted the U.S. military in Iraq and been responsible for more than its share of death and disorder.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
From Amazon:
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.

 

[Miss*Bijou]

can you elaborate...

Well look at that. I hoped the cockroach problem had been dealt with...but alas, you're still here. With your usual sunny disposition.

It must really be exhausting being such a tool, Huns. Maybe you should take it easy on yourself..... and go away or something.

Who knows, it might help your chronic unhappiness. It will help us not have to be subjected to your lame insecurities, that's for sure. (If you'd like me to elaborate on that, Hunny, just say so - it would be my pleasure.)

Don't worry we'll do just fine in your absence. In fact, we might just have to throw a party.. especially if you promise not to come back.

I think your mom's calling you... better run along now. Keep smiling.

.​

 

[whoisjohngalt]

The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown - The title speaks for itself

Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman - The most persuasive argument I have come across in favour of free market capitalism as the only just system of economic organization and the best way to secure political freedom

The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams - I think I enjoy his books more than the comic strips themselves.

Schrodingers Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea - Too difficult to describe briefly, you'll have to read it for yourself

 

[wolverine]

‘Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival midwestern American airport greater “”"”" area. Flight “”"”". Date “”"”". Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.’

Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.

It’s a comedy.

 

[Very Veronica]

The Authenticity Hoax by Andrew Potter, PhD - No fluffy pop psych here but a well researched thoughtful critique/conundrum on keepin it real.

The New Becoming Vegetarian by Vesanto Melina, MS, RD & Brenda Davis, RD - If you buy one book on vegetarianism (and everyone should)..history, thick with the latest science, a chapter on vegetarian diplomacy plus easy (yummy) recipes & meal plans.

Pandering by Heidi Fleiss - A coffee table scrapbook memoir by the notorious madame.

 

[Mona_Ramone]

currently: brian greene's 'fabric of the cosmos', which is taking me FOREVER to read, because i have to keep putting it down to think deeply.

'wolf hall' by hillary mantel. excellently written fiction set in tudor england. sorry to be nearing the end of it.

just finished: 'sex at dawn' by christopher ryan and cacilda jethá. a must-read for those wishing to feel virtuous in their promiscuity (me).

thanks for asking.

 

[Adriana✿]

Readers Digest,

Just started Mathew Flinders Cat by Bryce Courtenay

Just finished A brief "er" history of time - Stephen Hawking (I can't recommend this book enough!)

From One of the Most Brilliant Minds of Our Time
Comes a Book that Clarifies His Most Important Ideas

Stephen Hawking's worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, remains one of the landmark volumes in scientific writing of our time. But for years readers have asked for a more accessible formulation of its key concepts-the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, and the history and future of the universe.

Professor Hawking's response is this new work that will guide nonscientists everywhere in the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space.…

Although "briefer," this book is much more than a mere explanation of Hawking's earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and expands on the great subjects of the original, and records the latest developments in the field-from string theory to the search for a unified theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and ideas.

 

[justme]

Just finished: Will They Serve beer in Hell by Tucker max and have started reading his second Book Assholes Finish First. The guy is a piece of work, all about his life while attending College in the US